Growing up, my family camped a lot. We often went to the Sierras, and one year we found a particularly fantastic campsite not far from Yosemite.
There was a creek that ran along the back of our campsite. We hiked downstream one day and found an idyllic swimming hole that looked like it belonged in a movie.
The water ran off a giant piece of granite into the pool below, where it swirled around and then ran on downstream. Years and years of water rushing along the rock had created a natural water slide down the rock and off a ledge into the deep water below.
Joy is the only way to describe sitting at the top of a rock so that a rushing creek can shoot you down and drop you six feet into icy mountain water. Again and again we climbed the steep path to the top of the rock to find that joy.
Almost thirty years have passed, but the memory runs in my mind like an old movie reel clicking through the projector.
When you find something in nature that seems like it has been made just for your enjoyment, there is a unique heart cry that springs forth. The world is yours, a gift you could never afford to buy or be clever enough to make.
God made the world, and He has given it to us to care for and enjoy. His love, like that creek, flows over it, on it, through it, and pools in our hearts. That love is meant to smooth us down, make way for joy, and fill us until we are so full that the love flows out into other streams, other places, and other people.
But when life’s path leaves my legs heavy with exhaustion, the climb becomes more than I can bear, and the love seeps out the cracks in my heart before I can pass it along.
Today I read John 15:9-12 in the NLT.
“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
In this postmodern era, it is strange to think of obedience as the path to love and joy.
But there it is, in black and white. Obedience to the love command is the way to remain in His love and find the source of God’s joy.
In my ugliest moments, I resent that boulder, and I spit fire at the people to whom I am supposed to flow with love. The climb is too high. I think I am too weak. The love leaks out and I wonder if there is any way to feel loved, to know His love, without obeying the command to love as He has loved.
Because sometimes it hurts, and it is hard, humble work to love like Jesus loves.
My feet feel cemented to the bottom of the rock when those hard days come. I feel empty, like the last drip of love has seeped from my pool, and I am able to see the ugly cracks in my heart and face the facts: climbing to the Source of love is the very purpose of my life, and I will never make it up the path unless He leads me. He heals my sinfulness at the top of that rock, and it is where I long to be.
That’s when I know, that while Jesus came in love for me, He also came so that my life could send His love out and beyond my own heart. There is no other life for me than this one spent obeying Him, that He could love me and use me.
I pray for strength, set my heart to the task of climbing again, and my soul anticipates the coming joy.
